


Shadowed

by M J Holyoke (wholeyolk)



Category: Original Work
Genre: Eventual Happy Ending, M/M, Modern Fantasy, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:54:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24293176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wholeyolk/pseuds/M%20J%20Holyoke
Summary: It wasn’t the dream. It wasn’t the dream—he’d swear it! Someone . . . or rather something. . . had brushed against his left leg. It’d started at his ankle and slid upwards, landing on the sensitive skin on the back of his knee joint. He didn’t know how to describe the sensation, but it was real. Had to be.
Relationships: Monster Under The Bed/Adult Man Who Returns To His Childhood Home After Years Away, Original Male Character(s)/Original Monster Character(s)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 36
Collections: Fandom 5K 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hlae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hlae/gifts).



“Jake! Time for dinner!”

Jake ignored the call coming from downstairs. He wasn’t feeling very hungry at the moment, and anyway, getting out of bed was too much damn work. He closed his eyes and pulled the old G.I. Joe American Hero-branded comforter up to his chin.

“Jake! Did you hear me? Dinner’s ready!”

Good grief. Was his mother being persistent tonight! Usually she just called once and then let it go if—as was more often than not the case—Jake didn’t respond. The food would still be there in the kitchen when he did eventually get hungry. And c’mon, it wasn’t like he needed to take his meals on someone else’s rigid schedule these days. It wasn’t like he needed to do _anything_ on someone else’s rigid schedule these days. He rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in the pillow.

“I. said. DINNER!!”

Jake leapt out of bed with a surprised shout and yanked back the covers. There was nothing there except a vaguely Jake-shaped depression in the mattress and a scattering of tortilla chip crumbs from last night’s midnight snack. Shit. He could’ve sworn he’d felt something tickling his leg. It’d definitely felt alive. He shook the comforter, half-expecting some cartoony, giant insect to fall out. But nope, nothing. Nothing at all. God, how weird was that?

Oh well. Nothing for it, he supposed. And now that he was up—

“Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time, Mom!” Jake shouted. “Be right down.”

* * *

Pasta bake night. He probably would’ve been better off waiting; it would’ve given the food in the casserole dish more time to set. His mother had made enough to last three or four days in any case.

“So. What did you do today?” his mother asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Applying for a jobs online, I guess,” Jake lied.

She knew he was lying—the knowledge was as plain as the nose on her face—but after a brief pause she clearly decided not to start a fight with him about it. They’d been fighting a lot lately, and both mother and her adult son needed some time to recuperate and regroup. Eventually she settled on trying a different tack instead. “I thought I heard you singing earlier.”

“Oh. Yeah.” He _had_ been singing earlier. That much was true.

“You’re very good. I’ve always said so.”

Fuuuck. So much for not having a fight over dinner. Sometimes Jake thought his mother was baiting him on purpose. “Can’t make a living with just the music, though.”

“Some people do.”

“Uh-huh. That’s right. Tell me how I’m gonna be the Bruce Springsteen of my generation.” A hint of bitterness crept into Jake’s voice. He held a piece of ziti between his lips and inhaled through it like it was a straw. It made a faint whistling sound. He sucked it into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “I tried it once, remember? How quickly you forget how _that_ went.”

“You were young then.”

“Yeah, and I’m older now. Older means I have less energy than I used to,” Jake snapped.

Three years. Three fucking years of his early twenties wasted on launching his songwriting career. But no matter how hard he’d tried, his attempts had only ever seemed to fizzle. He’d never made enough money to move out of his mother’s house, and he’d gotten so depressed and angry. It’d felt like his life was ending before it’d even begun, and he’d needed a way out. Anything, he’d thought. _Anything_ to get him out of here.

“I enlisted with the army to get away from my most excellent musical career prospects, remember?” Jake reminded her.

His mother said nothing. Of course she remembered. And they both knew how _that_ had turned out in the end.

Jack tossed his fork down onto his plate with a clatter and pushed his chair away from the table. A little aggressive, nothing too egregious. “Right,” he announced. “Well, I’m full. I think I’ll go take a shower and then turn in for the night.”

* * *

He liked the water hot. So hot that it was practically scalding. He never felt clean anymore, not really, but extra hot water was better than nothing.

He still felt responsible. He knew he wasn’t the one who’d given the order, no, this was true, but he _was_ the one who’d seen it carried out. And then, what they’d done to him afterwards, for following his fucking orders—yeah, suffice it to say that he hadn’t been placing a lot of stock on the innate virtues of humanity since. After his discharge, he continued to nurture some amount of hope that the world would prove itself to be better than that what it’d seen fit to show him of itself thus far. But unfortunately, the world kept insisting on proving his worst fears right, and as a consequence, he felt constant, existential dread.

In short, as far as he was concerned, he had every damn right to lie around in bed all day. There was no way out of the shithole this world had come to. No single man, however heroic his aspirations, was going to change anything for the better. Hiding in his childhood bedroom was safest. Nobody was getting hurt if he did that. And more to the point, _he_ wasn’t going to be hurt again if he did that.

Jake didn’t bother getting dressed after he finished showering. He just toweled himself off in the bathroom, threw the towel in the hamper, and headed back into his room and straight to bed. Damp skin directly against the sheets—it wasn’t the greatest feeling ever, but he didn’t mind it. He’d been made to sleep in far worse conditions in the army.

No drugs, no therapy, thank you very much. He’d tried both over the years, and they just gave his mother another reason to nag him constantly about why he wasn’t getting better. Healing was a natural process; you couldn’t rush it. And in the meantime, he would rather take himself as himself, thank you very much.

The biggest problem was the dreams. Those were always bad, he knew, even if he couldn’t quite remember how they’d went afterwards.

 _Gunfire. Explosions. One man down, and then another. A shout. More gunfire. Oh God, is that a_ child _. . . ?!_

Most nights, Jake screamed himself awake. Tonight was yet another one of those nights.


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn’t the dream. It wasn’t the dream—he’d swear it! Someone . . . or rather some _thing_ . . . had brushed against his left leg. It’d started at his ankle and slid upwards, landing on the sensitive skin on the back of his knee joint. He didn’t know how to describe the sensation, but it was real. Had to be.

The room was dark, and beyond his window, it was night outside. Jake flipped the switch of his bedside lamp to ON. His bedroom was quiet and still. He lifted the sheets and checked underneath. The only thing he saw was himself: skin, body hair, the occasional pale shrapnel scar. Nothing out of the ordinary.

“Yeah, okay. Whatever,” Jake muttered as he switched the light back to OFF. He turned over onto his side and started focusing on going back to sleep—

But something was touching him again, he’d swear it. He flicked the light back to ON and checked beneath the covers again. Nope, nothing.

“That’s it. I’m going crazy. Loony bin, here I come.” This time, Jake didn’t turn off the light. He wasn’t a fan of modern psychiatry, not given how, when push came to shove, it’d been used against him, and he relished the idea of a psychiatric hospital considerably less than the average joe. So yeah, he could sleep with the light on, like he did when he’d been a silly little kid, afraid of the dark and the monster under the bed. Just like old times. Hell, he’d been sleeping with his light on well into his twenties, sheer laziness more than anything else, a bad habit he didn’t break until after he’d enlisted and sleeping in the barracks with the others had made it impossible to—

And there it was _again_. Ankle, behind the knee, then progressing higher, halfway up his inner thigh, tantalizing and ticklish—

“Shit! Goddamn it, what the FUCK?!” Jake shouted as he leapt out of bed, and with the speed of a striking snake (if he did say so himself!!) yanked the wrinkled cotton flat sheet and the ratty G.I Joe comforter completely off of the bed—

Just in time to see a strange, night-black hand dissolve into a puff of oily, night-black smoke and waft away, as if on an invisible breeze.

Jake had seen, though, before the hand had dissolved. The hand had been attached to an equally night-black arm, and that arm appeared to be attached to someone—or some _thing_ —under the bed.

Under the bed? Wait, _under the bed?!_ “Oh, what the fuck? What the fuuuuck?!” Jake muttered to himself as he kicked a big pile of dirty laundry and empty potato chip bags aside to clear enough space on the floor for him to get down flat on his belly. He took a deep breath. Who, him? Scared? Nah, he’d done multiple tours of duty in war zones. Okay, yeah, buuut . . .

Tentatively, he lifted the bed skirt and peeked underneath. He had to mash his cheek hard and flat against the floor to get a good view. And . . . nothing. He couldn’t see anything at all. Just deep gloom and a mass of shadows that probably represented at least three-hundred generations of one family of dust bunnies. “Fuck,” Jake said, letting the bed skirt drop. “Fuck.”

Still, Jake was nothing if not thorough. The job was half-done. For good measure, just, you know, to say he did, he retrieved a flashlight from the drawer in his bedside table, got back down on the floor, and shone the beam under the bed. He gave things a thorough scan. And as he’d surmised—dust bunnies. Lots of them. But nothing that could be remotely mistaken for a night-black hand or the arm it was attached to, never mind the notional whole fucking body the arm would’ve been attached to. “You’re being stupid,” he said aloud to himself. “See what living here has reduced you to? You’re regressing.”

Sure, that’s what it was. Regression. Sleeping in his childhood bedroom was causing him to regress. Riiiight. He almost succeeded in convincing himself of that.

Jake kept the bedside lamp switched to ON for the rest of the night anyway.

* * *

The incident was easy to forget about, especially since it didn’t immediately recur. Winter gave way to spring; spring turned to summer; and nothing much changed in Jake’s life apart from the change in temperature. He was still only pretending to apply for jobs and putting his mother off as much as possible. He was still composing his “socially-aware” music that he’d never be able to sell. And he was still having bad dreams most nights and screaming himself awake. _That_ happened so frequently that his screams didn’t even rouse his mother in the next room anymore.

Summer began to yield to autumn, but the temperatures of July and August didn’t break, and if anything, the air got muggier and more oppressive. Hurricane season had well and truly arrived, and in this shitty neighborhood, they didn’t need a direct hit for things to suck. One downed tree branch over the power lines was all it took, and the house would be without electricity for days. Yep, it was that time of the year for sure: Pretty soon, Jake figured, he and his mother would be eating their shelf-stable food by the greenish-yellow light of a half-dozen glowsticks and lamenting the lack of hot water.

And lo, the inevitable occurred, as it did most every year: power outage.

“Ow!” Jake yelled. He must’ve stubbed his toe on something, but he couldn’t tell what. The moon outside was a mere crescent, and at best his bedroom was visible to him only as variable textures of black. Annoyed, he threw himself into bed with a huff. Internet was out of the question because he wanted to conserve the battery life of his mobile devices. And he didn’t feel like cracking another glowstick open for reading because he didn’t think he’d be able to concentrate on a book anyway.

Which left sleep and whatever his dreams had in store for him.

“For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,” Jake said to his pillow. He’d been reduced to quoting Hamlet. “Fuck me.”

What came, though, wasn’t dreams. What came was that ticklish, tingly sensation of a hand touching his left leg. And _this time_ , Jake was ready. He grabbed and yanked the hand, and the arm it was attached to, and the owner of the arm in question, up and out into the open.

Jake gasped. “Who . . . ?! What . . . ?!”


	3. Chapter 3

It was shadow, but it was solid. A deeper, darker texture of black against the black backdrop of the bedroom. And it was _incredibly_ strong. The shadow wrenched its arm out of Jake’s grasp and fled—like some sort of sentient liquid in a big-budget Hollywood film or a low-budget Japanese anime—under Jake’s bed.

It happened so fast he wasn’t 100% certain it’d been real.

But after a lengthy internal debate and no small amount of pulse-racing trepidation, Jake did get down on the floor to try looking under the bed with his trusty flashlight. And surprise, surprise, he couldn’t see anything that looked like a living shadow, solid _or_ liquid. Perhaps it’d had enough with the close encounters of the _human_ kind for one night.

“I could certainly say the same about close encounters of the monsters under the bed kind,” Jake said to his pillow.

Needless to say, he didn’t get much, if any, sleep that night.

* * *

He didn’t get much sleep the night after that either. The power was still out, and the shadow was also out again and trying to grope his leg.

“Grope” was the right word for it, Jake decided. If he hadn’t known better, he’d have said the shadow was trying to feel him up.

In any case, though, the second night’s encounter ended exactly the same as the first one, with the shadow wrenching free of his grasp and fleeing to apparent invisible safety among the dust bunnies underneath Jake’s bed.

After that, it was another long, sleepless night. When the wan light of morning did finally arrive, though, Jake saw that he had a hand-shaped bruise on his wrist. The shadow had grabbed him there, he remembered, while attempting to wrench itself free.

Now he _knew_ this wasn’t just his imagination.

* * *

The power came back on late that afternoon, and Jake indulged himself in a scalding, half-hour-long shower. And given the sleep deprivation of the past couple of nights, he decided to take the wimp’s route out and sleep with the light on.

He had a theory he wanted to test.

And sure enough, the only monsters that plagued him were the ones manufactured by his own traumatic memories. When Jake screamed himself awake, it definitely wasn’t because a monster under the bed was trying to grope him . . .

. . . which, all in all, seemed to support his working theory.

* * *

“I’d really like to talk to you tonight. I promise I won’t hurt you. So please don’t run away,” Jake said to the empty air of his bedroom. It felt kind of awkward, but it wasn’t like Jake never talked to himself these days, and who knew? Maybe it would help to offer the shadow reassurance.

Naturally, there was no response. Not that he was expecting any. Could shadows even talk? Ah well, first things first. Jake took a deep breath and flipped the switch of his bedside lamp to OFF. Now all he had to do was lie in bed and wait.

He was his own bait. His heart raced in anticipation.

Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait long. As always, the touch started on his left ankle then began to climb—his calf, behind his knee, his inner thigh, and higher—

Yeah, he was _totally_ being groped. Jake forced himself to lie perfectly still as the mattress shifted beneath the weight of an additional second body. The shadow was in bed with him now, he realized, and it had the hard, strong body of a man; it had a man’s big, hard cock—oh! Jake felt his stomach give a little flip-flop. The shadow was directly on top of him, straddling his hips, and covering him with its weight. Jake readied himself mentally—close, so close, now he just needed to wait for the right moment to act. The shadow’s body settled against his, lips brushing the vulnerable base of his throat, his Adam’s apple, around towards the side of his neck where his pulse hammered frantically—

With the speed of a striking snake (if he did say so himself!!), Jake flipped the shadow over so that he was on top and the shadow as pinned beneath him against the bed.

“Please! I don’t want to hurt you! I just want to talk!” Jake said as the shadow beneath him bucked and kicked and writhed furiously, its strength stunning. He locked his knees around the shadow’s waist and put the bulk of his weight on the shadow’s hips while his hands were locked like manacles around the shadow’s wrists.

The shadow said nothing and continued to struggle. It occurred to Jake, too late, of course, that his idea about talking wasn’t going to end well if the shadow couldn’t actually talk. But even if he couldn’t really see the shadow he was wrestling in the bed, it certainly _did_ feel like a man. Surely, if it took the physical form of man, it would be able to talk like one?

“Can’t we just talk . . . please?! I just want to talk, I swear! Really! I do! I have so many questions!”

And abruptly, like a marionette with its strings cut, the shadow went limp beneath Jake. “All . . . all right,” it said, “what do you want to ask me?”


	4. Chapter 4

“Okay, first things first. What are you? Where do you come from?”

Jake could feel the shadow shrug. If he didn’t already know better, he would’ve thought it was an ordinary person. “I don’t know. I don’t remember a time before there was you, Jake. When you were a boy, you used to say I was the monster under the bed. You started sleeping with the light on to keep me away.”

“Hmm.” Jake had figured as much. It explained some things about himself he’d never really explored. “And you don’t like the light.” That wasn’t really a question.

“It’s not a question of ‘like’ or ‘dislike.’ I can’t remain physically corporate in the light.” The shadow had a calm, pleasantly masculine voice. Not monstrous at all.

“And you feed on my fear.” That wasn’t really a question either.

“Yes, any strong emotion will—”

Jake growled and gripped the shadow’s wrists tighter.

“—but I don’t _need_ to feed!” the shadow continued hastily. “Emotions just . . . they just make me more . . . real, I suppose. Stronger. When you were a boy, I used to try to scare you to make myself stronger. But since you’ve been back, I haven’t needed to do that. Not once. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been.” The shadow’s voice grew softer. It sounded gentle, affectionate almost. “Those are some bad dreams you’ve been having, Jake.”

“Yeah. Well.” This was making Jake feel uncomfortable. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“You’re not a bad person, Jake. You’re not. I . . . I saw what happened to you, what they did, and I—”

“And what, my monster under the bed’s a fucking mind reader now?! You wanna be my therapist or something?!” Jake yelled. He felt himself going cold and numb, then burning hot. Rage made him lightheaded. “Stay the fuck out of my dreams—!”

Succumbing to rage was a mistake, as it turned out, for it gave the shadow a new burst of power. It pushed Jake off like he weighed nothing and fled back under the bed.

“Shit,” Jake muttered, scrubbing his face with the palms of his hands in frustration. That had gone medium-well. Or, okay, no, it’d gone pretty terribly, and fucktard that he was, he’d probably screwed over his chances of having any sort of cordial relationship with the shadow for good.

He hadn’t even managed to find out whether or not the shadow had a name. That was another thing he’d meant to ask before he’d gotten distracted by his own damned issues.

* * *

The dreams got worse.

He was before the military tribunal, testifying under oath about the lies. No civilians, he’d been told. Enemy combatants only. They’d gone in, and it’d gone so wrong. So very wrong. So many lives lost. Innocent lives. And friends. He’d felt shock and disbelief at first, but afterwards he’d gotten angry. He’d pulled the surveillance files—they’d known. They’d fucking _known_ and hadn’t told him. “But you weren’t authorized to view those files,” the tribunal said, “and in any event, you gave the order.” According to them, he was mentally unstable. A loose cannon. By the time the dishonorable discharge came through, Jake was already back home with his mother.

He was entering that compound amid a cacophonous hail of gunfire. There were shouts, screams. Some of the screams didn’t sound like young men. They sounded like . . . shit. He saw the woman’s body first, small and crumpled like the body of a broken bird’s. She was unarmed. Then he saw the child she’d died trying to protect, so young it was impossible for Jake to tell whether it was a boy or a girl. The back of the child’s head was a bloody mess. The child had been trying to run from the gunfire. Unfortunately, there’d been nowhere to run. And the worst of it was, Jake didn’t even know who’d shot them. It could’ve been his men; it could have been _him_. In the chaos, nothing was certain.

The explosion, deafening, propulsive—it’d knocked Jake clear off of his feet. They’d put an improvised explosive device at the center of the compound; the surviving enemy combatants were all consumed by the explosion. Jake himself had been fortunate to be at the outer edge of the blast range. With the exception of ringing ears and a few superficial shrapnel cuts, he was all right. His best friend Len—call him Leonard at your own risk—had not been so lucky. Jake watched helplessly as the light faded from his eyes. “Sing me one of your st-stupid songs, asshole,” Len said. “Which stupid song would that be, asshole?” he asked. Len never responded to the question; he was already dead.

Over and over and over again. Every night, the same parade of images and memories. He couldn’t shake them, couldn’t forget that nothing he did would ever make it right. Nothing would salvage his military career. Nothing would bring back that child or its mother. Or Len. Oh, _Len_ . . .

There was a crash and the sound of broken glass, and Jake’s grief-stricken fury erupted from his mouth in a wordless, animal scream.

“Shh, shh. It’s all right. It wasn’t your fault. This isn’t _you_.”

Something or rather some _one_ was restraining him. Jake struggled against the hold. “Let me go—!” Who in the hell . . . ?! He must’ve knocked his bedside lamp over because it was dark and he couldn’t see who—oh. The shadow. It was the shadow. And the shadow wasn’t forcibly restraining him so much as embracing him. Trying to sooth him. Caress him. Kiss him.

The shadow’s big, hard cock rested against his skin. Not prodding, not persistent. But present. Offering. Jake couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt attractive or desired. He realized he was tired of grief, of death. He wanted to live a little, just a little while. So he turned into the embrace and began to kiss the shadow back.


	5. Chapter 5

The first time was over exceedingly quickly—stress relief, mostly, a fast release of a buildup of pressure. He might not have believed it to have happened at all were it not for the sticky evidence on his belly and bedsheets the next morning.

“Want some?” Jake asked his mother as she shuffled into the kitchen, still wearing her bathrobe and slippers. He was poaching eggs over last night’s leftover vegetable stew.

“Yeah, sure,” his mother said, brows raised. It was unusual for Jake to be awake and out of bed so early. And cooking for two—ha! A minor miracle when it came to her adult son! “You’re in a good mood today.”

Jake shrugged. His mother was astute in her way. And maybe he was.

“Um, don’t forget the toast.”

He was already on it. “Way ahead of you there.”

“Huh. I see. And thanks,” his mother added. She wasn’t even trying to hide her surprise anymore.

* * *

“You’re shaped just like an ordinary person,” Jake remarked between wet, openmouthed kisses to the shadow’s lips, cheeks, and chin. It was true; even if he couldn’t see them, he could feel the shadow’s wide, generous mouth and strong jaw with its hint of scratchy stubble.

“Yeeesss . . .” the shadow hissed softly as Jake reached between them and wrapped his fingers around the shaft of that big, hard cock and began to stroke, up and down, up and down, nice and steady, pausing occasionally to pinch the crinkled tip of the foreskin and rub the sweet spot on the underside where it attached to the base of the glans.

Jake hadn’t had the wherewithal to reciprocate properly last night. He planned to make up for lost time tonight.

“I don’t understand why that would be,” he continued, his other hand reaching around to stroke the sharp jut of the shoulder blades, the bumps of the spine, and the muscular swell of the buttocks, which were clenching and releasing, clenching and releasing in response to his attentive ministrations. “I don’t really remember what you might’ve looked like when I was a boy, but it definitely wasn’t _this_.”

“My shape, ooohhh,”—the shadow’s hips jerked as Jake gave the cock an especially tight squeeze—“my shape is a response to your emotions. When you were a little boy, you were frightened of that sea-witch in the Disney cartoon, so I was mostly octopus arms whenever I became corporate back then, as I recall. Now, though? What scares you most, Jake? What scares you most is other people and . . . and _yourself_.”

It made sense. Jake couldn’t really deny it. And at the moment, it was also mighty convenient.

He urged the shadow down flat on its back and straddled its hips. Their cocks brushed together; they both shuddered. Jake spat on his palm, slicked them up, and began feeding that big, hard cock into his hole, one slow inch at a time.

Jake panted eagerly, cock twitching against the shadow’s belly, as he waited for the initial queasiness of penetration to pass. The shadow’s hands rested on his waist, bracing him, fingers fluttering and restless against his skin.

When he began to move, the pleasure sweeter, if possible, than he’d remembered it being, it was _the shadow_ who moaned brokenly. It was feeling what Jake was feeling, Jake realized, multiplying the pleasure, and that big, hard cock got bigger and harder inside Jake with each lift up and plunge back down again, perfectly angled to pummel his prostate gland with each pass.

“Fuuuck,” Jake moaned. This wasn’t going to last long. The cock inside him thumped in agreement.

“Jake, oh, Jake, I-I need—” the shadow whimpered, hips lifting in counterpoint to Jake’s own movements, the sound of each strike of skin against skin sharp, moist, delicious.

Ah, of course. Obviously. Their hands interlocked around Jake’s erection, and together, they began to jerk him off. He came with a hoarse, bitten-off cry, and the shadow was right behind, filling Jake with a flood of phantasmal heat.

* * *

“Oh, by the way. I never asked,” Jake said afterwards while they cuddled. “Do you have a name?”

The shadow didn’t immediately respond. Jake could feel the tension in its body; it seemed discomfited by the question. “I don’t have a name, but . . . well, there is a name I like,” it said at last.

“Which is?” Jake prompted.

“I like the name ‘Len.’ I don’t want to be him or replace what he was to you,” the shadow added in a rush, “but I can see him in your dreams, and he seemed like he was such an amazing person. The sort of person anyone would want to be. And . . .” the shadow paused. “And you loved him. And I think he loved you, too.”

Jake was surprised by this—and more to the point, he was surprised that he wasn’t offended. He’d loved Len, yes, that was true, and there was a kind of halo around Len in his memories. Of course the shadow would notice that, and of course Len had loved him, too. They’d never done anything, no, but love didn’t require _sex_ to be real. And as for the shadow . . . ? “Cool. Len it is.”

“R-really?”

Jake shrugged. “Why not?”

“Sing me a song, asshole,” the shadow said. God, it sounded exactly like Len when it said that.

“How about l sing you the one I’m working on? I’d always intended it for Len . . .”

“That’s fine. And then after that, you’re gonna sell that song and become a world famous singer/songwriter.”

“Wow. _Wow._ Anyone ever told you not to push your luck? I haven’t even sung you Len’s song yet, and you’re already planning my future career for me!” Jake laughed, disbelief warring with amusement.

He and the shadow kissed again, and they stopped talking for a good while after that. This felt like a new beginning, somehow. But he didn’t say that aloud. He didn’t want to jinx it quite yet.


End file.
